Tragic (3 page)

“Professional my ass,” Miller sneered as he pulled away from the curb. “You chickened out!”

“Fuck you, Gnat,” Bebnev yelled. “Next time, I shoot the fucker!”

“Yeah, yeah, big talker,” Miller scoffed. “Who’s the
sooka
now, huh, Bebnev?”

C
HARLIE
V
ITTELI SLAMMED HIS BIG
meaty palm down on the tabletop, causing four sets of silverware, four plates and beer mugs, as well as the two men sitting with him, to jump. “What the fuck does it take to get something done around here?” he snarled.

They were gathered around a back corner table at Marlon’s, a pub popular with Manhattan’s longshoremen, located in Hell’s Kitchen near the west side of the New York City waterfront. No other patrons had been seated near them, a concession to Vitteli’s importance as the president of the North American Brotherhood of Stevedores, or NABS.

Vitteli kept his voice low, but there was no mistaking the intensity and anger that boiled just beneath the surface. He was an imposing man, barrel-chested, and his cinder block of a head seemed to sit directly upon his broad shoulders. With his mashed nose, pewter-gray crew cut, and facial scars, he looked like a middle-aged prizefighter. But the marks weren’t earned in the ring; he got them on the streets, most from his days as a “union organizer” thirty years earlier.

He glared at the other two men as if challenging them to answer his question. Of them, only Joey Barros could hold his gaze. Barros, tall and gaunt to the point of cadaverous, had started on the
docks with Vitteli when he was young, and both men had come up through the ranks based largely on their willingness to bust heads to protect the union’s party line. The difference between them was that as they’d aged, Vitteli was more likely to use his brains to achieve his ends, whereas Barros was happier doing his persuading with bats, brass knuckles, and a wicked straight razor. He was not afraid of Vitteli, who trusted him like no other.

The third man at the table was Jack “Jackie” Corcione. Vitteli didn’t trust him like he did Barros, though in some ways he was more valuable. Corcione was the son of Leo Corcione, the union’s founder and president for forty-five years until his death almost two years earlier. The old man had hoped that his only child would succeed him, but Jackie didn’t have the nerve or leadership skills to lead a rough-and-tumble union. Leo had recognized the weakness and instead packed his boy off to Harvard, where he’d earned an MBA and then his law degree. He was then brought back into the fold as the union’s legal counsel and chief financial officer.

Vitteli kept Corcione in his inner circle for two reasons. There wasn’t anything about the union’s legal and financial operations, including those that were “under the radar,” that Jackie didn’t know inside and out. The other reason was that, for all his toughness, Vitteli had a soft spot in his black heart for Leo Corcione. He owed the union’s founder everything. He’d been a thug and a dockworker, but he’d made a name for himself during the dockworker strikes in the seventies, and the old man had rewarded him by bringing him into management.

And now I’m dressing in silk suits and living the good life,
he thought whenever Barros warned him that Jackie was a weak link in his armor.
I owe it to the old man not to let Joey go after his kid. Not unless it becomes necessary.

While the old man was alive, Vitteli hadn’t worried about Jackie because of what he knew about him, including that he had expensive tastes he paid for by embezzling union funds albeit on a small scale. But more important was the fact that Jackie Corcione was gay.

“A raging queer,” Barros had said with a smirk when he brought him the news. “With a taste for Dom Pérignon, Brooks Brothers, and pretty Columbia University frat boys.”

Vitteli had used the information to his advantage years ago, when the old man was still alive, by sitting Jackie down in his office one day and telling him what he knew. “It don’t bother me what side of the bun you butter,” he said, “or that you’re padding your bank account from the union’s benefits account. But it would kill your dad.” He stopped and grinned. “If he doesn’t kill you first.”

Jackie blanched. “Please don’t tell him,” he’d begged. “I’ll stop stealing. I won’t see guys.”

“Not to worry, Jackie boy. I look out for you.” Vitteli had smiled. “You look out for me.”

After the old man died, it didn’t matter that Vitteli could no longer hold homosexuality over Jackie’s head. Jackie was in so deep, stealing to support his habits, that the members would have torn him apart—along with Vitteli and Barros—if they learned what they’d all been doing with the union’s pension funds.

“Goddamn it, I thought this was a done deal,” Vitteli swore, now looking only at Barros.

“Lvov told me it was taken care of,” Barros answered flatly. “Apparently, his guy went to the house but Vince’s wife and kid were there, so he backed off.”

“I don’t give a shit about his bitch or brat,” Vitteli hissed, leaning forward and speaking lower so the others had to move closer to hear him. “This guy, whoever in the fuck he is, should have done all three and that would be that.” He pointed a thick finger at each of them. “Every day that Vince Carlotta lives is a day closer to all of our asses being in hot water. Maybe this alleged hit man ain’t the right guy.”

“We met with the guy. He’s not on the dean’s list at Columbia,” Barros said. “But he’s done this before—that’s what Lvov said anyways. Remember, we didn’t want to use our ‘partners,’ the
Malchek gang, on something this . . . sensitive, and the membership would tear us to pieces if they knew we were dealing with the Russian mob in Brooklyn.”

“And maybe it wasn’t such a bad call on his part,” Jackie Corcione chimed in. “It’s one thing for something to happen to Vince, especially if it looks like a home robbery. Makes the news for a little bit but then goes away. But add Antonia and her baby, and this goes national. The press goes ape shit, and there’s all kinds of pressure on the cops to get to the bottom of it.”

Vitteli stared at Corcione for a few seconds before he suddenly erupted with laughter and clapped the surprised younger man on the shoulder. “The press is going to go ‘ape shit,’ eh? I love it when you try to talk like a tough guy. But stick to your Hah-vard faggot bullshit; you’re much more valuable to me as a bookkeeper than a gangster. I got Joey for that.”

Corcione blushed as Barros laughed. “Yeah, Jackie’s gonna make a deal you can’t refuse,” Barros said with a smirk. “A regular godfairy.”

Pushing back from the table, Vitteli grinned at Jackie’s discomfiture. The young man was a pansy, useful but no backbone. “Hey, don’t worry about it, Jackie, we’re only yanking your chain,” he said as he pulled a silver cigar case from the pocket of the suit coat hanging from the back of his chair. He removed one of the expensive Cubans from inside and clipped the end. Then he flipped open an old Zippo lighter with his left hand and puffed furiously on the cigar until a red ember appeared on the end. It was illegal to smoke in any bar in New York City, but no one in the waterfront area was going to tell Charlie Vitteli he couldn’t light up.

•  •  •

Old man Corcione had been no saint but a street savvy, tough son of a bitch. He had to be, in the years when he was fighting to keep his independent fledgling union from being absorbed by the bigger, more well-known International Longshoremen’s Association,
as well as from the Italian mob. He’d been a man who made sure that interlopers were met fist for fist and bat for bat until both had backed off. As such, he was a man who recognized Vitteli’s talent for strategic violence and his intense loyalty to the union and had rewarded him with his trust.

Leo had two favorites. The other was Vince Carlotta, a handsome, charismatic man who’d also come up through the ranks. Although not afraid to fight, and fight well when pushed into a corner, Carlotta had always been the one to negotiate and compromise, especially if it benefited the membership. He had no family and had started working on the docks as a teenager, but Leo saw something special in him and treated him like a son. His protégé had returned the love and respect.

Carlotta and Vitteli had often locked horns over the union, which was a confederation of small dockworker locals scattered across the northeast, as far west as the Great Lakes and up into Canada. Vitteli insisted that without clear direction from the top, and no tolerance for dissent, the union would weaken, as would their influence over its membership. Carlotta was the rank and file’s champion, who argued that the old days of ensuring loyalty among the members through intimidation no longer held sway. He contended that allegiance and cohesion would come by working for better wages and insurance benefits, as well as by improving working conditions and safety.

Although Leo Corcione continued to treat Vitteli with respect, listening to his arguments and sometimes even agreeing with him, thereby overruling Carlotta, most of the time the old man sided with Vince. Never really sure of himself despite his bluster, Vitteli grew jealous and paranoid when he started noticing that Carlotta and the old man were spending a lot of time locked away in private talks, even going out to dinner by themselves, according to his spies.

Then came the day when Barros walked into Vitteli’s office at union headquarters with alarming news. He said his sources had
told him that Leo was preparing to step down as president and name a successor.

“Rumor has it that he’s going to choose Vince,” Barros claimed, arching an eyebrow as he watched for his boss’s reaction. Then Barros suggested that maybe the old man needed to have “an accident” before he named Carlotta as his heir apparent, which the members would have taken as gospel.

At first, Vitteli recoiled at the thought. But the more he thought about playing second fiddle to Carlotta, the better Barros’s argument sounded. “I don’t need to remind you that if Carlotta is president,” Barros said, “he’s going to find out about our little retirement fund.”

Vitteli had all but decided to let Barros devise a plan to get rid of the old man in a manner that wouldn’t arouse suspicions when fate intervened. Vitteli and Carlotta had been in Leo’s office arguing over a complaint from several union crane operators that a half-dozen new cranes were unstable under certain conditions and could topple. Carlotta was insisting on an independent inspector, while Vitteli, who’d taken a kickback for pushing through the crane manufacturer’s bid, said it was unnecessary and could even put the union in financial straits if “for some trumped up reason” it appeared that management had been derelict in looking out for worker safety.

They had both resorted to shouting when suddenly Leo clutched his chest, gave a gasp, and collapsed to the floor. Carlotta had administered CPR until the ambulance arrived, but the old man never regained consciousness and didn’t pull through.

Although Vitteli had to sweat it out for a few days, there was nothing in Leo’s will or any other paperwork naming Carlotta as his heir apparent. So it was brought to the general membership for a vote.

Vitteli had recognized early on that he was unlikely to prevail in a fair fight. He’d get the vote of some of the old-timers who’d been in the trenches with him and still looked fondly on the “old ways of
doing things.” But they were outnumbered by younger members, most of whom would throw in with Carlotta. He’d be able to buy a certain number of votes, but in the end it had taken what Barros euphemistically called “voting irregularities” to seal the deal.

Carlotta had looked stunned when the “final vote” was announced and Vitteli declared the winner. But he’d graciously conceded defeat and promised Vitteli he’d support his presidency. “At least until the next election,” he said with a slight smile, reaching out his hand to shake Vitteli’s.

Then fate, and bad engineering, again intervened. Just as the operators predicted, one of the new cranes had fallen while unloading a cargo ship when a sudden gust of wind whipped down the Hudson River at the wrong moment. Two men had been killed and four others seriously injured.

Carlotta had been incensed, though he took some of the blame upon himself because the old man’s death had distracted him from the crane issue. “Now we have two widows and kids without fathers, and four other families without breadwinners because we failed them,” he lamented. He insisted that the union hire an independent engineering firm to look at the cranes.

Vitteli had at first resisted. “Pay the benefits and let’s move on,” he ordered Jackie Corcione. But his rival had threatened to take his demand for an independent inspection to the members, so he gave in. Then he directed Barros to do whatever it took to bribe, blackmail, or, as it turned out, both to persuade the engineer who headed the study to come out with a favorable report. “The accident,” the married engineer, who had a penchant for young prostitutes, had written, “was not due to faulty engineering, but freak weather conditions and operator error.”

There’d been rumbling when the report came out and threats of walking out on the job by the crane operators. But Vitteli—through Barros—came down hard on the balky crane operators, threatening to find replacements for what was one of the highest-paid positions on the dock. They all stayed at their jobs.

When Vitteli announced the engineer’s report, Carlotta looked at him hard, but he kept his mouth shut, at least for a little while.

A week after the report was issued, Vitteli got a call from an informant he had with the U.S. Department of Labor’s office in Washington, D.C., that dealt with union issues. According to the caller, Carlotta and his hotshot lawyer, a young turk named Mahlon Gorman, had traveled to the capital that week to complain about the so-called voting irregularities and wanted advice on how to go about contesting the results.

The informant told Vitteli not to worry just yet. The Labor Department wouldn’t get involved because under the Landrum-Griffin Act such grievances had to be brought before the union first. Only when that remedy was exhausted would the department even consider stepping in. It was akin to telling chickens that they had to complain to the fox about his presence in the henhouse before talking to the farmer, but it was the law.